TEXAS STATE BOARD OKS MATH STANDARDS; REJECTS LINKED EXAMS UNTIL MONEY ALLOCATED TO BUY MATCHING TEXTBOOKS — The Texas State Board of Education gave preliminary approval to new math standards, but also decided state standardized tests will not reflect the new standards until the legislature allocates funds to buy textbooks to match. The new standards [...]

MARYLAND NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR PROTECTING STUDENTS AGAINST FOOD ALLERGENS IN SCHOOL LUNCHES — The Maryland State Court of Appeals ruled the state government, the education department, and the state superintendent are not responsible for ensuring school lunches are suitable for children with food allergies. The ruling came from a case in which a five-year-old Maryland student, who [...]

In his third State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Barack Obama urged states to require that students stay in school until they either graduate or turn 18. “We… know that when students aren’t allowed to walk away from their education, more of them walk the stage to get their diploma,” Obama said in [...]

CONNECTICUT BOARD APPROVES DEPARTMENT-WIDE OVERHAUL — The Connecticut State Board of Education unanimously approved education Commissioner Stefan Pryor’s plan to revamp the state education agency. The reorganization will create several new high-level positions, including a chief operating officer and other chief officers who will oversee improvement efforts on academic achievement, the education workforce, and turning around [...]

The Obama Administration has scheduled a National Youth Summit in Washington, DC for February 26 to convene youth leaders to help shape strategies to provide pathways for all youth to be on track to achieve high school and postsecondary credentials. The summit will share what students have indicated to the Department, provide additional youth the [...]

The Department has scheduled a labor-management conference for February 15 and 16 in Denver for leaders of school districts and labor unions from across the country to identify ways that collaborative labor-management relationships, policies, and agreements can directly drive academic achievement. The Department invited about 2,000 districts that secured federal funding in the past year [...]

The NCES updated its websites on rural and urban education. The websites, which draw primarily from data collected by NCES and the Census Bureau, compiles and disseminates data on rural and urban education in four general areas: 1) students, 2) teachers, 3) school environment, and 4) finances. Examples of specific topics within these areas are [...]

The NCES released a technical brief entitled Statistical Methods for Protecting Personally Identifiable Information in Aggregate Reporting to help state and local officials protect student privacy through their statewide longitudinal data systems. The technical brief examines what protecting student privacy means in a reporting context. NCES concludes that even though aggregated data is reported to the public [...]

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is scheduled to release The Nation’s Report Card for science January 25 for students in grades 4, 8, and 12 in 2009. NAEP will announce the results via live web event at 11:00 a.m. (ET) athttp://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard. The Nation’s Report Card: Science 2009 is a product of the National Center for Education Statistics [...]

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)  U.S. Department of Education released new state-level data on the state adoption of common core standards in English language arts and mathematics, as well as state adoption of compulsory school attendance laws and exemptions. The new data can be found on the State Education Reforms website athttp://nces.ed.gov/programs/statereform/. The [...]